ISP business partner? Is there any ISP in NZ that does business right?

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pohutukawa

189 posts

Master Geek

# 166205 5-Mar-2015 20:21

I run a niche IT company that services SME businesses.

We've been looking for an ISP to partner with to deliver fibre and VoIP to our clients and honestly I can't for the life of me find one that doesn't:

- Have hugely restrictive Terms, aimed at stealing customers
- Have regular outages on simple platforms like VoIP
- Run the other way as fast as they can when there is a problem
- Mismanage billing
- Guide clients through the quagmire of Chorus etc.

Is it unrealistic to think that there is a nimble, smart ISP who is looking to form real partnerships with businesses like mine without taking the piss, promising the early and delivering very little, being responsive and offering a range of products at a reasonable (not silly money, but not the cheapest either) price point?

Bernard Hickey (and others) can't get satisfaction from NZ's largest ISP. Can't even go with the biggest and best-resourced of the lot!

https://twitter.com/bernardchickey/status/573317190121742337

johnr

19282 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

# 1251940 5-Mar-2015 20:26

How much money do you think ISPs are making these days? ISPs require 3rd partys to fix faults / provision / installs ETC.....

whitecd

40 posts

Geek

# 1251942 5-Mar-2015 20:38

Bernard Hickey was trigger happy over an obvious fault. To many people trying to make a point.

jnimmo

What does this tag do
1025 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

# 1251957 5-Mar-2015 21:49

DTS? I haven't tried the VoIP side though

myfullflavour

773 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

Full Flavour

# 1251973 5-Mar-2015 22:55

I'd suggest you investigate what regional ISPs you have in your area and have a coffee with the candidates to see if there is willingness to work together.

There are some top regionals around that scored very highly in the latest Consumer NZ survey.

lxsw20

2336 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

# 1251978 5-Mar-2015 23:17

One person supports this post

Tried Snap Business?

We are with one of the big players at work and spend well into the 6 figures and still get very average service/billing nightmares/ call center run arounds/ change of client manager every 5 mins, so you are not alone.

SirHumphreyAppleby

1088 posts

Uber Geek

# 1252005 6-Mar-2015 07:06

2 people support this post

myfullflavour: I'd suggest you investigate what regional ISPs you have in your area and have a coffee with the candidates to see if there is willingness to work together.

There are some top regionals around that scored very highly in the latest Consumer NZ survey.

I would suggest that Full Flavour not be one of the ISPs you talk to. They rarely respond to tickets or call with updates despite promising to do so. They misplaced my hardware, taking months to return it to me, and still owe me money after the unrequested, and completely uncoordinated termination of my service more than three months ago*. Issues seem to be dealt with by ignoring them and hoping they go away.

* Specifically, I asked about terminating the service in October, via e-mail, Geekzone, and phone (someone was to call me back), receiving no response on all occasions. In no way was this a commitment to do so, and arbitrarily ceasing hosting services without coordinating such changes with customers is not acceptable behaviour from any network provider.

chevrolux

4325 posts

Uber Geek

# 1252014 6-Mar-2015 07:26

Voyager have quite a good wholesale platform for both Internet connections and SIP trunking.

Otherwise I would say Unleash who are called Solarix (I think).

michaelmurfy

/dev/null
9028 posts

Uber Geek

Moderator

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Lifetime subscriber

# 1252043 6-Mar-2015 08:11

2 people support this post

Spark Business normally answer the phone in a matter of minutes with me - not sure what he is on about.

Solarix (Unleash) are very good and so are WXC. It is normal with any ISP to experience faults and if you're on a standard business connection you don't have a SLA (unless if you pay for one).

pohutukawa

189 posts

Master Geek

# 1252569 7-Mar-2015 08:37

Big thanks for all the responses and PMs providing info and responses.

I will be following up on them all.

Thank you.

Ragnor

8035 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

# 1256555 11-Mar-2015 18:58

Yeah Voyager, Unleash/Solarix, DTS would be my short list.